In many cases, during a natural disaster, loss of life and bodily harm can be attributed to lack of appropriate early warning systems. With early detection and warning, individuals can prepare for impending disasters and take appropriate actions needed to mitigate loss of life and damage to property.
By and large, most individuals rely on emergency broadcast systems to receive early warning and reports of impending natural disasters or other hazardous environmental conditions. However, it is rare that an individual, or even a group of individuals, has constant access to such emergency broadcast systems. In general, these systems are provided over some form of electronic medium (e.g., television, radio, Internet), all of which must be actually turned on or otherwise engaged for the device to receive the emergency broadcast signal.
Further, since emergency broadcast systems are generally indiscriminate as to location, it may be hard for an individual to know whether they are in danger with regards to any specific emergency broadcast. For instance, an emergency broadcast could be sent out over all available mediums (e.g., television, radio, Internet) for an emergency that only affects or potentially affects a portion of the communities served by the emergency broadcast. In this example, public panic could be caused in areas not affected by the current or pending hazard.
Additionally, all emergency broadcast systems are currently based on the concept of a central broadcasting system receiving an alert from a single source (e.g., government agency) and then broadcasting that alert to everyone in a listening/viewing area. The recipient of the broadcast has no means to interact with the alert system nor does it have the ability to provide real-time updates as to whether the broadcast is relevant to the specific area of the recipient or whether the recipient needs additional support (e.g., medical, fire, rescue) in response to the emergency.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a hazard detection and alert device capable of alerting individuals of impending dangers based on their specific location. These and other features and advantages of the present invention will be explained and will become obvious to one skilled in the art through the summary of the invention that follows.